I doubt that I have a good answer in any case, but could you be a bit more explicit than you were when you said that your “tummy starts to run”?

Also, do you have IBS? What exactly is it that the probiotics treat?

Sorry for the delay in responding. I’m buried in work this week. However, I did turn up a couple of references that my be relevant. I’m not qualified to interpret them for you, but you could certainly discuss them with your GE.

Back to the original documentary, the underlying hypothesis about (intermittent) fasting has been that by paying more attention to the way the endocrine system interacts with the calories-in-calories-out net energy balance, you can do some special things with fasting that are different from what you get from simple caloric restriction. Most of us are focused on the role of insulin, reduction of average insulin levels and improvement in insulin sensitivity.

However, fasting also dramatically increases other hormones at the same time as it reduces insulin. In particular, the empty stomach reminds us that we haven’t eaten by secreting ghrelin, a “hunger” hormone. In fact, it may be ghrelin that signals the liver to reduce IGF-1, and ghrelin signals our bodies to burn fat (lipolysis). Curiously, it may also decrease insulin sensitivity. Apparently, there is no such thing as a free lunch, even when it consists of nothing but water.

Anyway, it turns out that one of the many things that ghrelin does is help to regulate the GI motility. Counter intuitively, to me anyway, ghrelin increases GI motility, and people with IBS frequently have too much or too little GI motility. In your case, too much.

See: Inui et al., Ghrelin, appetite, and gastric motility: the emerging role of the stomach as an endocrine organ, FASEB J March 2004 18:439-456; doi:10.1096/fj.03-0641rev (http://www.fasebj.org/content/18/3/439.full)

In fact, I found a study that seems to show that at least some IBS patients have significantly more or less ghrelin receptors in their bowel, possibly making them hper-, or hypo-sensitive to the motility regulating effects of ghrelin.

See: El-Salhy, M., Lillebø, E., Reinemo, A., & Salmelid, L. (2009). Ghrelin in patients with irritable bowel syndrome. International Journal of Molecular Medicine, 23, 703-707. http://dx.doi.org/10.3892/ijmm_00000183

I have IBS…took awhile for it to be diagnosed and I was thrown off 5:2 while I was getting treated for all the wrong diagnoses.
Anyways…I now take Mintec 30 minutes before eating (including broth) and also I use Iberogast drops in water all the time when I drink water.

I had a major antibiotic induced problem and took probiotics to address it…recovered, but am still taking saccaromycae boulardi daily also a very good high numbers mixed probiotic.

What really saved me was the Monash University low FODMAP diet…I found a telephone app for this which is very clear and very cheap…I take it shopping with me. It has massively reduced my discomfort.

So, I find I do fine as long as I eat the right foods when I do eat and when I am fasting I follow the same guidelines and eat broth a lot.

The Monash Fodmap info is really well researched and clearly laid out. There’s a good diet and recipe book by Sue Shepherd but I think the phone app is even better..it is incredibly well designed.

I don’t know why it took ages for me to be diagnosed and really I have standard ordinary IBS that just got mistreated and misdiagnosed over and over. I am now really very careful about taking antibiotics and challenge whether I need them when they are prescribed…and I am pretty religious with the saccaromycae cerivisae boulardii…found some research that helped me get over a really bad antibiotic resistant infection using Vancomycin and SB. Still wrestling my way through it, however, it is good for any sort of colon infection, provides a structure for healthy gut biota to grow on and discourages unhealthy biota…so it is a kind of protective probiotic and it doesn’t stick around after you stop taking it.

For me, the IBS started at the time I began the 5:2, maybe coincidentally…I was (on eating days) eating all the wrong things in the wrong ammounts for IBS I was astonished to learn when I got onto the Monash FODMAP info. And even on fasting days, I was having broth cooked with onions for examle and lots of garlic…no go foods for IBS.

Good luck to anyone wrestling with this. I’m now back on the 5:2 and just following the low FODMAP guidelines and doing fine with the probiotics and low FODMAPS.

No idea why gastroenterologists didn’t recoomend any of this to me…I had to read obsessively to find the right info. and I am a bit fed up with it. Bookshelves are groaning!!! I recommend these things I mentioned based on my own experience but we are all different and have to be our own best advocate…:)

So you were eating lots of sugar in the form of glucose, lactose, fructose etc? And your gut bacteria was all out of whack. I suspect that 5:2 exacerbated the condition but couldn’t have caused it. People are under the misapprehension that changing to 5:2 magically cures things overnight and get upset that by the end of the first week they are worse off. It takes months to get your gut bacteria into the right balance. You have upwards of 6000 different species of bacteria. In many instances the situation gets worse before it get better. All the various bacteria a waging a war for the various nutrients available. It takes time for the “good guys” to finally win.